FORGET THE iTOILET

The Onion got there first.

ANOTHER GUY ON THE TIMES BLACKLIST?: Bill McGowan, whose book, “Coloring The News,” raises important questions about the problems of racial ‘diversity’ in the newsroom, and political correctness in journalism. The incorrect liberal Nat Hentoff takes on the Times for its decision to ignore the book in the current Village Voice. Careful, Nat. You might be next.

COLLAPSE OF THE EURO-LEFT

It’s happening. It really is. Pim Fortuyn’s party stormed to second place in the Dutch elections, behind the Christian Democrats, smashing the social-democratic consensus that had run Holland for the last eight years (and, truth be told, much longer). So we now have center-right governments in Italy, Spain and France. Only Britain’s New Labour has bucked the trend, but as Harold Meyerson points out, Blair is less left than DLC. The reason for all this? One massively over-looked factor: the EU. It has robbed people of a sense of control over their lives, it has been foisted on populations without their consent, it combines the worst of socialist regulations with the difficult challenges of global capitalism. In short it’s an undemocratic behemoth begging to be unravelled. The liberal press will play this is a triumph for the far-right. Don’t believe them. There are indeed some unsavory characters mixed up in all this, and we sure shouldn’t prettify them, but this is really a victory for democracy. And Pim Fortuyn helped bring it about. The other factor that I think needs stressing is: September 11. I think Europeans get now what the threat of resurgent Islamist extremism is. They’re getting killed themselves around the world. They don’t believe their governments or elites grasp the problem. So they’re voting for international security, which, right now, means parties of the right, or at least those prepared to say an honest thing about Islamo-fascism.

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL: As usual, a superb Victor Davis Hansen piece on the war so far. I liked this paragraph:

Mr. Ashcroft has been libeled as an insurrectionist, and yet so far our Constitution is intact – and we have not seen another September 11. Mr. Bush was pilloried for ineptness – and yet Israel has been allowed to take the necessary measures to curb the suicide bombing. Our military has been denounced alternatively as too cruel and too lenient – and al Qaeda is now truncated. Guantanamo was called a concentration camp, but the inmates look stouter and healthier than when they arrived. Mr. Sharon was dubbed a killer, but now Palestinians who have sponsored real killing are talking of peace. Mr. Rumsfeld was declared at war with Mr. Powell, but in fact, both are complementary, not adversarial, as enemies and allies now realize it is their own choice whether to meet a conciliatory Powell halfway – or deal all the way with a bellicose Rumsfeld.

My feelings entirely.

THIS GUY GETS REAL MONEY CALLS: Bob Reich manages to beat Paul Krugman at the buckraking game. But hey, guys. Keep those stories coming about the evils of the plutocratic rich!

COLLAPSE OF THE GAY LEFT: The old guard – clapped out denizens of the late 1960s – are beginning to realize that their socialist mantras and multicultural pablum have about as much appeal to most gay men as a vacation in Uganda. Joe Conason, ever the loyal Democrat, tells gays not to “jump ship” from the Party. What you mean, me, straight man? Is he aware that a million gays voted for his nemesis, George W. Bush, last time around, or that a third voted for Gingrich in 1994? Richard Goldstein, still seething after all these years, vents in the Guardian, in a rehash of the piece in the Village Voice. Goldstein obviously doesn’t know what to do with gay men who don’t buy into his orthodoxy. He compares me to Pim – but then claims I’m more of a far-rightist than Fortuyn was:

But there’s a major difference between Fortuyn and his American cousins. He was a feminist, while our homocons are dedicated to the preservation of male power. Fortuyn’s outsider image stemmed from his sense of the political elite as an old-boy’s club. He wanted to replace it with something else entirely, whereas Sullivan merely wants in-this is a major part of what he means by the term virtually normal. That’s not a standard Pim aspired to. He had no beef with gay people who flamed or fornicated, whereas American homocons turn their anger on their own kind. This stance has taken them far in the media, always eager to be entertained by a homophobic aperçu delivered by a homosexual. In the Netherlands, that sort of shtick would be seen for what it is: minstrelsy.

I wonder if Goldstein has actually read my books or columns. If he did, he’d know I’m a fervent feminist, a believer in equal opportunity for women in all areas of life and politics. My difference with the left is with their silly assertion that there are no biological or psychological differences between men and women. Does that make me a supporter of male supremacy? He also suggests I’m a sexual prude, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m a big defender of sexual freedom – mine and others’. He claims I’m also somehow hostile to drag queens or flamers or any other kind of gay sub-sub-culture. I’ve never said or written anything of the kind. And if he’s in P-Town this summer, I’ll be happy to take him as my guest to “ShowGirls.” So this is yet another groundless smear from the gay left – the kind used against Fortuyn. They never learn, these people, do they?

BROCK MAKING IT UP AGAIN: You knew there was more to come. Tim Noah finishes the job.

FEMINISTS AGAINST ISLAMIC IMMIGRATION: Call it the Fortuyn effect. It’s happening here as well. Check this blog out. From Berkeley no less.

KINDER BUD, PLEASE: One reason to oppose marijuana legalization and regulation. The government can’t even deliver pot right.

BLAIR TAKES THE EURO PLUNGE: Just as the rest of Europe is experiencing a backlash against the EU, Britain’s PM has decided it’s time for Britain to abandon its own monetary independence by abolishing the pound. Give him points for timing.

NEWS YOU CAN REALLY USE: This site really fills a need. It tells you which famous old people are still alive and which ones are dead. Essential when watching old movies. It reminds me of a wonderful feature they used to have (and may still do) in the English magazine for seniors called “The Oldie.” Each issue they would have a profile of someone you thought was dead but actually wasn’t. They called the feature: “Still With Us.” Priceless.

NO VICTORIAN GENTLEMAN: Here’s a smart refutation of David Brooks’ notion that today’s stultifying liberal media establishment is somehow like the Victorians:

David Brooks’s compari
son of today’s media elite to Victorian gentlemen, which you quote with approval, shows that his heart is in the right place, but his concept of the Victorian gentleman is founded in stereotype rather than in study of history.
Real Victorians engaged in vigorous political journalism. No one then debated the existence of media bias – it was openly acknowledged. Newspapers were founded with the purpose of promoting a particular party or platform. Relics of this remain today in the names of newspapers like the Little Rock, Arkansas “Democrat-Gazette, ” the Red Wing, Minnesota “Republican-Eagle,” and – most charmingly – the Cecil County, Maryland “Whig,” still published a century and a half after the demise of the Whig party.

The letter continues, along with others on environmental extremism on both sides and ‘desecration’ of the Church of the Nativity. Check it out.

THE DESECRATION OF THE CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY

Imagine if a bunch of Jewish soldiers, in a tense street-battle, had used a mosque as a sanctuary. Now, imagine that they had boozed it up, wrecked the joint, and left to enjoy a safe international exile. Do you think we would have heard the last of it? But the same is done by Palestinian terrorists in one of the holiest shrines in Christianity and the world media barely bats an eyelid. Where’s the outrage? Or has it all been used up on the Jews?

APPLE SURPASSES ITSELF: And I thought the iPod was cool.

DEAR READERS: Sometimes the email in-tray is worth passing on. Two favorites today: “You are to politics what Rex Reed is to movie reviewing. You will eventually be caught shoplifting.” I laughed. I cried. Then there was this: “Come on….you haven’t irritated me for days now. What’s going on. Has ‘treading the boards’ dulled your edge?” Next time, Howell, use your own email address.

WHY SHARON IS RIGHT

Between Jon Chait and Charles Krauthammer, the case seems to me almost irrefutable.

THAT NUKE DEAL: Yes, the Bush-Putin agreement sounds fine, I guess. But I differ with Mike Kelly’s positive assessment today. When you look at the fine print, you find that very few nuclear weapons will be destroyed – they’ll simply be deactivated and stored. Can you imagine a worse scenario for the terrorist-filled world we live in? A reader worries about the consequences of this half-assed pact:

Bush is missing a huge opportunity to get rid of nukes and keep them out of terrorists’ hands. This agreement allows the US to back out and avoid the ceiling they’ve set – some have said there is game afoot where the US is tacitly encouraging the Russians to MIRV, (meaning put multiple warheads on missiles) in order to use that as pretext later to back out of the ceiling. And 10 years is a needlessly long amount of time to get to those levels. It could be done in 10 months. More importantly, this agreement does not deal with tactical nuclear weapons. The Russians have upwards of 12,000 of those nasty things sitting in warehouses where terrorists might steal them. Finally, if the Russians follow the U.S. in storing most of their nukes, and the Bush administration refuses to increase for Nunn-Lugar (cooperative threat reduction) we could wind up with more nuclear weapons under shoddy protection, which terrorists could steal. Under that scenario, this agreement would badly reduce our security. This agreement ought to be a first step in an ongoing process of arms control work between the US and Russia. We could probably get the Russians to scrap most of their tactical nukes if we took our (roughly 200) tactical nukes out of Europe – where they serve no utility, unless you believe they are there to deter an invasion of our new NATO mates, like Latvia. And this agreement must be accompanied by far greater efforts to ensure the security of nukes, and fissile materials in Russia. I worry that the hawks will not take that threat seriously until a tactical nuke or dirty bomb goes off in an American city.

I worry too. That blather about wrapping up the Cold War is not as important as winning the current one. And on that point, I’m not sure this deal helps us very much at all.

DEEPER THEMES: What lies behind the environmentalist movement? A culture of victimology, in which people want to blame the environment for their physical or personal woes? Spiritual and religious decline? Scientific hubris? An earnest desire to save the planet? Readers chime in on the Book Club page. Next up: send your questions to Bjorn. He’s been flying from Denver to Chile and now to Denmark – hence his absence so far. But he’ll be responding soon.

MICKEY, COME OVER TO APPLE: Now here’s a journalistic test-case for Slate. Mickey Kaus’s use of Windows XP has been a disaster. It keeps crashing! Can Mickey do what I did and convert to Apple? Or is Bill Gates another Howell Raines? (Update: Since I’ve used my Powerbook, I’ve had zero crashes. My only problem was using AOL in London. But that is AOL’s fault for not adapting to Apple overseas. Otherwise, my Mac is a dream.) So come on, Mickster. Pull a Sully! (Mickey also has some thoughts about the Raines business.)

SOME STRAY THOUGHTS: About the Raines business. It’s a shame he canned me, but I want to reiterate that I’m not whining. I’ve made criticisms of the Times and they don’t have to publish people who criticize them. But I would like to point out that I have written many positive things about the Times as well – and often link to Times stories that I find excellent or important. In the last few weeks, I have highly recommended two pieces in the Times Magazine, for example, and have done so with many, many other pieces. I also assigned a book by a New York Times reporter, Frank Bruni, for the Book Club. I might add that when you write a blog about media, politics, culture and whatever, it is simply impossible not to include criticism of the most powerful and influential newspaper in the world, especially when it has embarked on a new era of crusading left-liberal journalism. Moreover, no one has ever said my own work for the Times is at issue. Two recent cover-stories for the New York Times Magazine, for example, were selected for the Best American Essays of 2000 and the Best American Science Writing of 2001. My last big essay, This Is A Religious War, was one of the most discussed articles of last year. I still have great respect for the paper, and will continue to praise and criticize it in the future. The only thing that worries me is the signal this sends to writers in less established positions than me. It says: don’t criticize us or we’ll use it against you. That’s chilling for open discourse, bad for journalism, and worrying for all the usual democratic reasons. But it’s definitely revealing about the thinking behind the current Times management. Diversity in all things – but thought.

HAROLD AND MAUDE ONLINE: On the web, there’s space for everything.

HOME NEWS: Don’t get mad at me but I found a new home for Euclid. Her new owners are a great couple who have been wanting a dog for a while. They met her a week ago and again yesterday and have the time and energy for her. She stayed in the crate I found for her to make the transition easier. I’m sorry, but one beagle was enough for me. The couple live in the District and we’ll stay in touch but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I had a tough time saying goodbye. But I think it’s best for Euclid, which is the main thing. Thanks for all your interest.

GORE LOSES IT: I’m no fan of cheesy soft-money gambits, but the notion that the sale of three photographs from the first year of president Bush is somehow vile and disgusting seems to me to be way over the top. The controversial photo is of Bush on the phone, for goodness’ sake. MoDo describes this banal little montage thus: “Bushies are using that dark and sacred day to divide and conquer.” Well, she would, wouldn’t she? Al Gore, who did far crasser things for soft-money and who worked for the sleaziest soft-money pol in recent history, had the following to say about it: “While most pictures are worth a thousand words, a photo that seeks to capitalize on one of the most tragic moments in our nation’s history is worth only one — disgraceful. I cannot imagine that the families of those who lost their lives on September 11th condone this — and neither should the president of the United States.” I’m sorry, but I fail to see how anyone can be appalled by the use of such an insipid photo. As part of a trio of images of Bush’s first year, it’s utterly inoffensive. In fact, since some kind of photo about the most important event in his presidency would surely be necessary, this strikes me as one of the most inoffensive imaginable. The morphing of Al Gore into Terry McAuliffe began in earnest during his appalling, principle-free, lame presidential campaign. It now appears to be complete.

A EULOGY FOR PIM: The most moving and intelligent Fortuyn remembrance I have yet read – by the superb novelist, Cees Nooteboom – is, alas, in French. If you can read French, it’s worth every word.

A SCANDAL ABOUT THE ABUSE OF POWER: An effective piece in the English Catholic newspaper, the Tablet, grapples with the idea that dysfunctional or disordered sexuality is the root of the current crisis in the Church. Harvard Jesuit James F. Keenan doesn’t deny the sexual dimension, but he sees it as secondary to a deeper issue:

The molestation and raping of children are not primarily sexual acts; they are violent acts of power. By these actions children are harmed, sometimes destroyed. These actions are about power. In fact, most of the scandalous actions of which we read are about power.
When the bishops moved these priests around and assigned them to new parishes and let them have access again to children, these were not sexual acts, but acts of power.
When the bishops and pastors denounced the parents and relatives who charged that priests had abused their children, these denunciations were acts, not of sex, but of power. When the cardinals tried to blame the media for unleashing a frenzy, these were not charges of sex, but of power…
We in the priesthood, from seminarians to the Pope himself, need to learn more about power, about sharing power and about accountability in the exercise of power. Certainly, we need to have a visitation of our seminaries – and of our rectories and our chanceries – conducted not by the Vatican but by competent lay people and priests. The aim should be to see whether we are learning about the extent of our power, of the uses of that power, and of our accountability to God and to the People of God. In the light of those lessons, assuredly, we would see the need to recognise the vocations of others.

He’s onto something.

SOWELL ON BAUER: A much-needed and much deserved obituary for Peter Bauer, the man who helped drag development economics into some sort of reality.

THE NEW YORK TIMES’ FORTUYN OP-ED: Yes, they deserve congratulations for finally bowing to reality. But there was more to that op-ed than met the eye. It was written by a leading member of the Dutch media establishment, the editor of NRC Handelsbad, a Netherlands counterpart to Howell Raines. And the author, Folkert Jensma, was a critical part of the vile smearing of Fortuyn that the New York Times was complicit in before his tragic assassination. Like the Times, Jensma made no concession that he had been wrong. A Dutch reader points out the following:

In an NRC Handelsblad editorial appearing on May 6, the day Fortuyn was killed–but written before the murder–the newspaper drew a stark parallel between the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, which the Dutch commemorate on 4 and 5 May, and Fortuyn’s policies. I quote:

“In the future, will prime minister Fortuyn stand on Dam square [site of the National Monument] with a wreath–the man who thinks Islam is ‘backward’ and people from Morocco and Turkey are not part of ‘modernity’? These days symbolize the reconstitution of the free Netherlands, where you can say what you want, believe what you want, regardless of skin color, race or nationality. It is the pride of the Netherlands that we do not regard one culture as better than the other. That we treat people equally in an open society. That we wish to keep xenophobes and racists at bay. It is a crying shame that, sixty years later, we have to remind a politician in our midst of this.”

Apparently Mr. Jensma has had a change of heart. Too bad he didn’t have it before May 6.

What I find interesting here is the conflation of two ideas: toleration and complete relativism. Of course, there should be absolute toleration of religion. Bu when one religion argues that women should not be allowed to vote, that gays should be stoned to death, and that freedom of the press is illicit if it contradicts Islamic law, then it is very important to point out that this is anathema to Western principles. As a culture, illiberal Islam is inferior to the free West, just as Communist Russia and Nazi Germany were. To say so is not to betray liberal democracy; it is to defend it.

IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW: ArabNews has a new guest columnist – waxing lyrical about the war-crimes of Israel in Jenin and elsewhere. Robert Fisk? Phil Reeves? Ted Rall? Nope. None other than David Duke. Clarifying, no?

ELLIOTT ON FORTUYN

Old friend and now Time macher, Michael Elliott, sends a really smart email about the Fortuyn business. Worth reprinting here in full:

More generally, I agree with all that you and others have said about the lazy way in which Fortuyn was pigeonholed. But apart from the PCness of some of the European media (though not all of it) I suspect there’s something else going on here. Without excusing European journos, there is a history of clever, elegant European politicians attracting a pretty rough crowd of followers. Enoch Powell, on the occasions that I met him when covering politics for The Economist, was quite the most urbane, intelligent politician in Westminster, if sometimes a bit dotty. But like it or not, his pronoucements on race in the 1960s encouraged a climate of genuine fear among immigrants to Britain; and that sense of fear was just exacerbated by the habits of some of his supporters. Haider, whom I’ve met, is polished, well-dressed, “loves New York,” witty, rightly dismissive of the semi-corrupt carve-up of spoils among Austrian’s mainstream politicians – but equally plainly, not averse to the odd, sly, bit of anti-Jewish posturing. He knows exactly what he’s doing. I’m not defending the European media here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of its members – perhaps those without a deep knowledge of The Netherlands – “read” Fortuyn just by looking at some of his Rotterdam supporters. (Rotterdam is not Amsterdam.)
A second point is more fundamental. The policies that Fortuyn advocated aren’t new, and we shouldn’t pretend that they are. In fact, Fortuyn’s central take – that immigrants should assimilate to the values of the host country – is precisely what official French policy has been for years. The French line has always been that if you want to live in France, you become French – you learn French, you learn about the Gauls, Napoleon, Racine and Corneille at school, you eat baguettes, you celebrate the quatorze juillet, you stand for the Marseillaise etc etc. You respect “republican values” – including secularism – and you don’t wear hijabs to school. In all these respects, French policy is markedly different from the policy that successive British governments have followed for years – let multi-culturalism bloom, fund religious schools, encourage official “diversity” etc etc.
Which approach has been more successful? Hard to say. I think I could make a case that London – but, please note, no other British town – is the most racially harmonious city in Europe. On the other hand, there’s no doubt that insofar as Fortuyn’s criticisms of Dutch policy make sense, they apply, mutatis mutandis, to that of the UK. And there are indeed worrying signs that in the UK the policy of “let a hundred flowers bloom” leads to troubling consequences; some of the flowers are weeds, note, eg, the rise to prominence of the Finsbury Park mosque and other locales of Islamist extremism. The French, I think, could legitimately argue that a policy of assimilation has worked reasonably well for Francophones from Africa and the departments d’outre mers in the Caribbean; I was taken to task a while ago by a Martiniquais teacher in France for writing something that implied he was not “French.” But assimilation doesn’t seem to have worked as well for the Muslim community. (Indeed, the Marseillaise was booed at a soccer match between France and Algeria a few months ago.)
Which brings us back to the question that you (and many others) have asked since Sept. 11: what are the conditions in which large numbers of Islamic immigrants to western nations can be persuaded to accept western political and social values, without being asked to disavow their religious faith? We need to find the answer. Fast.

Quite. And Fortuyn should be thanked for having the guts to ask them.

DOMESTIC DRIFT

Yesterday, president Bush signed the worst bill yet of his presidency – a massive, bloated, corporate welfare package to bribe American farmers. After his protectionist decision on steel tariffs, it’s time for those of us who support this president but believe in free markets and smaller government to speak out. I make the case against in the column just posted opposite.

A FLURRY

Several stories prompted by my blog of last Friday about being canned by Howell Raines. Here’s Howie Kurtz and Nick Schulz. A little taken aback by your emails, though. I haven’t had so many congratulations since I graduated college. Two typical emails:

I don’t always agree with what you have to say, but if this latest is the response of the NYT to someone legitimately expressing their opinion, fuck them.

And this one:

Just heard you got fired from the NY Times Magazine roster. Thank God. Thank Paul Krugman.

Actually, I think Mr. Krugman would find that last comment a trifle superfluous.

SPEAKING OF KRUGMAN: Blogger Matthew Hoy is developing a rep as the quintessential debunker of Krugman rhetoric. Today’s post – put up mere minutes after Krugman’s column came online – strikes me as an exemplum of how blogging is keeping big-shot journalism on its toes.